Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude

“Maybe.”

Mingus swung his feet from the bed, gestured Dylan to sit down, kneaded his muzzle and smacked his lips.

“Master Dillinger has concerns,” Mingus said, mock-pompous. “Things he needs to know . He’s operating on a need-to-know basis.”

Dylan didn’t speak.

“I keep trying to make you bust a smile, D-Man. What? You afraid Robert wants to mess with you? Because you know I’m looking out.”

“I’m not afraid of Robert.”

“Aight, cool. I didn’t mean to say you were.”

Dylan wanted to get to business. “How much are you short for the deal?”

“We could be short nothing. The question is how much you want to come in?”

“Two hundred.”

“Two hundred.” Mingus ruminated. “Right. I see no problem with that.” Antenna up now, he waited for the kicker. “We can cut you in for two bills, that’s not that big a deal one way the other.”

“But I want something else.”

“Ah, something else.”

“The ring.”

“Ho, shit.” Mingus covered his face with his fingers, laughed grimacing behind them, shaking his head. “Dude come round here talking about this and that , whole time he wants the ring back.”

“You still have it?”

“So we on that basis. You had me thinking this was about, I don’t know, comic books , or a drug deal, or some shit.”

Mingus’s laughter was bitter. It was as if Dylan had asked to buy their friendship back, all their secrets with it, Aeroman and the bridge and things which had no right name. As if on six or seven summers he’d put a price tag of two hundred dollars, eight twenties, the wage of a week spent shaving pistachio and butter pecan curls out of frosted tubs. Perhaps he had.

Pushing off with hands on bare knees Mingus stood, stumbled out into the hallway without a word. Through open doors pee bombed into porcelain.

“I still got it, yeah,” he said when he returned. “You know, you only had to ask me for it back.”

“Okay, give it back.”

“What, now you ain’t gonna pay me?”

There was a terrifying satisfaction in hearing Mingus’s anger, at last. “No, I appreciate your keeping it for me,” said Dylan, voice still cold, face growing hot. “I’m glad to pay.”

“Damn straight.”

“Who knows about the ring?” asked Dylan. He’d only waited all of high school to ask it. Now he’d paid for the right.

Mingus turned away.

“You told Arthur?”

“Nah.”

Of course not, who would? “Robert?”

Silence.

“Motherfucker, you told Robert.”

“He was with me when I jumped the cop at Walt Whitman,” said Mingus. “I had to give it to him to get it off me when they took me in.”

“Did he ever-try?”

Mingus shrugged. “He was like you.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Means he tried .”

Of course. The ring was not a neutral tool. It judged its wearer: Aaron Doily flew drunkenly, and Dylan flew like a coward, only when it didn’t matter, at the Windles’ pond. So it had attuned to Robert Woolfolk’s chaos.

“Don’t tell me,” said Dylan. “He flew sideways.”

Mingus left it vague. He’d always made it his habit to protect their honor against one another-Dylan, Arthur, Robert. To say nothing.

Dylan stood and placed two hundred dollars on the stained sheet. Mingus frowned at it.

“Looks light to me,” he said coldly.

It was a moment before Dylan understood.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice a husk.

Mingus almost smiled. “Let me see what you got on you.” The phrase was a cue from a yoking script- let me see it, let me hold it for a minute, I’ll give it back, man, you know I wouldn’t take nothing from you -the stony authority over whiteboys Mingus never exercised. Mingus had let him hear it: their difference, finally.

For the first time Dylan considered all Mingus might have spared him. His cheeks flushed as he felt for the remaining three hundred in a pocket which might as well have been made of glass. Just because the ring never bestowed X-ray vision that didn’t disprove X-ray vision’s existence.

Sweat had broken everywhere on Dylan’s body. Now it trickled into his eyes.

“All right.” Mingus yanked a dresser drawer and added Dylan’s bills to a heap of money there. Perhaps it was Robert Woolfolk’s roll, perhaps another supply, impossible to say. Mingus left the drawer open, expressing indifference, perhaps daring Dylan to risk pilfering his college funds back.

All through Gowanus fortunes were being massed by enterprising young men, who knew?

Isabel Vendle would have been proud. She’d always told Dylan to put every dollar into a drawer and see what grew.

“I have to get it from upstairs,” said Mingus.

“Upstairs?”

“It’s hid in Barrett’s stash,” said Mingus. “Don’t bug out, it’s safe. Anyway, Barrett wants to see you, I told him you were coming around. He’s always asking why you never come around.” Then, unable to keep from twisting the knife, he added: “You see anything else ’round here you want? But then I guess you out of folding money.”

They went upstairs.

The gold records were gone from the wall, leaving faded rectangles topped with nail holes. Little else had changed, only been worn, neglected. Barrett Rude Junior stood behind the counter pouring Tropicana into a wide tumbler and the lip of the tumbler was chipped in three places and the tiles of the counter were loose in crumbled grout, crunching where he set the carton. His silk robe was thready, wide sweat stains under each arm. It hung on him too loosely. He’d shrunk, his bulk gone. His beard was still trimmed into boxy chops but they were asymmetrical, gray-coiled. His fingernails and toenails were thick and yellow as claws. The skin below his eyes had retreated, sunk in.

A fan whirred in the bedroom. There was no music apart from what leaked with the dead air from the street.

“Little Dylan, damn.”

Dylan was stunned, dumb.

If Abraham was going to grow this old he didn’t want to know.

“Been too long, man. I don’t even recognize you, big man. Look at you.”

“Hey, Barry,” Dylan managed.

“Good to see your skinny ass, boy. I see your father all the time, I never see your ass. Day’s shaping up hot like a motherfucker, ain’t it? Y’all want some cold juice?”

“Nah, I’m good,” said Mingus.

“No thanks,” said Dylan.

“Need to drink OJ, Gus, restore your vitamins . See you don’t get all depleted, boy. Sit down, you both making me nervous. Look like a couple of cats on a mission .”

“I need something from your room,” said Mingus.

“Get it then, what’s the problem? Dylan, sit down. Take some juice with ice, don’t say that don’t sound good in this heat. Check out the Yankee game? Five minutes, Ron Guidry, man. Best pitcher in the world.”

Mingus went into the back. Dylan sat on the couch, behind the coffee table. Barrett Rude Junior’s mirror was maybe the only unbroken surface in the room, powder splayed like a galaxy. A plastic straw lay to one side.

Barrett Rude Junior caught him staring at this pinwheel of dust, said, “Don’t be shy.”

“Oh, no, thanks.”

“Don’t be thanking me, baby, help yourself.”

“Go ahead,” said Mingus, emerging from the bedroom. “Do a line, D.”

“It’s all right.”

“What, you never got high before, man?”

“Leave him alone, Gus. Little Dylan can do what he wants. He’s my boy, he’s going to college, damn , I can’t believe how the time goes, can you believe it, Gus? Little Dylan’s taking off to college, the boy can’t get high because he’s keeping his shit together .”